November 12, 2017

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Our smartphone predictions for 2018

by John_A

Some thoughts on where it’s all going.

We’re not yet done with 2017, but we’re about to wrap up the last few big phone launches of the year. So, with a mostly complete picture of the current year in smartphones, it’s time to look ahead to the next generation. Here’s what I think we’ll see out of Android, and the smartphone world in general, in the next twelve months.

Basically everything will be 18:9

As taller, less bezelly panels become more attainable to makers of mid-tier phones, expect the Android landscape to become increasingly tall in the coming year, with ever slimmer borders. The look that Xiaomi and Samsung pioneered will become the new standard. That, in turn, will push everyone in the high-end to differentiate in other ways.

Big batteries in more things

We’re already seeing this in the phones of late 2017 — devices like the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, HTC U11+ and BlackBerry Motion — but as phones get taller and battery experts figure out how to pack more milliamp-hours into smaller spaces, phones with 4,000mAh cells will become increasingly common. That’s great, because as we’ve seen this year, that number is about the sweet spot for easy two-day battery life.

Someone will emulate the iPhone X’s stupid notch

Of the bigger names, my money would be on Oppo, if anyone. Although dumb, Apple is going to (successfully) turn the notch into a status symbol of sorts, so expect the usual copycat vendors in China to have plenty of lower-priced clones ready for sale by spring 2018.

Someone will figure out — and ship — in-display fingerprint

The holy grail of biometric authentication will finally happen, and it’ll happen probably in the second half of 2018. Rumor-mongers and analysts already point to the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 as a possible trailblazer for this new technology, which over time should prove easier to develop than Apple’s Face ID.

Wireless charging everywhere

As sales of iPhones 8 and X climb, and the big players in the Android space look to reach feature parity with Apple, wireless charging will become a table-stakes feature for flagships, just as water resistance is now. Expect to see a lot of glass flagships as a result in the coming year, at least until someone figures out how to deploy wireless charging through metal in a commercial product.

A slow burn for AI

The arrival of Android 8.1, with new neural networking APIs, will see slow but steady growth in apps using AI features as a differentiator. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 is rumored to include some kind of AI hardware, and Google and Huawei are already shipping it in existing products. But Android is a big ship, and any new app features that require both hardware and OS upgrades is inevitably going to take time to propogate.

HTC and LG will make more Pixels

Despite the Pixel 2’s panel being trashed (sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly), Google’s hardware partnerships won’t change for the coming third-gen Pixels. HTC is, AC understands, contracted for at least another year of Pixel production, and the almost $1 billion that Google sank into LG Display means it’s unlikely to backtrack. Here’s hoping LG can step it up its OLED game in the next twelve months. Expect 18:9 displays in both Pixels, and dual cameras — both are obvious, no-brainer upgrades for Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.

Android tablets will continue to be weird while we wait for Fuchsia

Whatever Google’s master plan is for its work-in-progress Fuchsia OS on phones, tablets and laptops may come more clearly into focus in 2018, but in the meantime, the moribund state of the Android tablet market will continue. With the Pixel C entering end-of-life status, Google kinda has to release a new reference tablet if it wants to continue supporting this form factor. If it does, expect a low-profile launch sometime early in the year.

A make-or-break year for HTC

October’s monthly HTC revenue numbers aren’t great, continuing the downward trajectory for the troubled Taiwanese company. If HTC is to succeed — which, as a consumer who likes the stuff they make, I hope they do — it needs to become a leaner organization. The Google investment should help — or, if you’re a pessimist, it could mark the start of HTC winding down its smartphone business ahead of a full acquisition. Either way, 2018 will certainly be a make-or-break year for the company.

Android 9.0 Popsicle

You heard it here first 😛

Other odds and ends on a working weekend:

I dropped by Madrid earlier this week to get my first look at Xiaomi’s new line-up of handsets for Europe, which starts with the Mi Mix 2 and Mi A1 arriving in Spain. In a Q&A session after the event, Xiaomi global boss Wang Xiang didn’t commit 100% to launching in any specific other regions, but noted that other EU countries were a strong possibility. (Bad news for the UK, then.)

It was great to drop by the BlackBerry Unstoppable Tour in London this weekend. I’m in the process of setting up the first BlackBerry I’ve ever actually used (for real), and I’ll no doubt have some thoughts on the BlackBerry Motion in the near future.

We’ve got the OnePlus 5T launch coming up next week, and it’s going to be interesting to see how OnePlus has improved on arguably the best mid-priced flagship of the year. Stick around for live coverage from the New York launch event!

The rumors around the Honor 7X and (in particular) Honor V10 are fascinating, and if Honor can bring us a more affordable take on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro — one of the best Android phones out there right now — it could be on to a winner. Honor usually has to wait a cycle or two to get the latest goodies from the Huawei mothership, and if that’s no longer the case then it’s a big development for the brand. The phone(s) launch December 5 in London, and naturally, we’ll be there.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back for another Editor’s Desk on December 3. 🎄